Who cares about you, and whom do you care about? Every year billions of dollars are spent trying to figure out, just this. Why do you think the advertisements you see on Facebook are so accurate? Every time you online shop or search products or services on Google, measurements are being made like how long…

We have no idea why Tylenol works. Acetaminophen, the active drug in Tylenol, was the happy consequence of guess and check (and not without some grave errors along either). The mechanism that makes acetaminophen effective is unclear to us. It seems odd that something we use for common aches and pains is a complete mystery…

Our J-term course on the book Epic Measures was fortunate to have Kate Lofgren ’09 join us via Skype on Thursday to share her experiences as a post-bachelor’s fellow at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME). It was a delightful surprise to see Smith College mentioned in the book — as part of…

How do we take the pulse of global health? It is impossible to perform a physical on everyone in the world, and once you did the data would be out of date. Yet, we have access to data on various health conditions, which often provide information such as the number of people affected by disease…